The Kastehelmi range of glassware was designed by professor Oiva Toikka in 1964. Kastehelmi was one of Toikka’s most popular designs and remained in production until 1988. To celebrate Toikka’s 50 years at Iittala, Iittala reintroduced the range in 2010.
The idea of using droplets of glass as decoration came to Toikka when he was thinking of ways of covering the joint marks left on the surface of pressed glass pieces by the production process. His experiments with various droplet moulds resulted in a completely new surface structure that highlighted the play of light on the surface and how it reflected. The name he chose - Kastehelmi (Finnish for dewdrop) - was inspired by the lines of dewdrops on grass stems typical of summer mornings.